Bringing together your coastal stories, memories and anecdotes

All about the project!

Welcome to the Tenby & Aberystwyth Story Project!

This project ran for several months in 2016, and the website has been left online to act as a community resource. The central aim of this project was to gather together people’s stories, memories and anecdotes about the coasts and seafronts of Tenby and Aberystwyth. These stories were used to provide clues to what people value as their heritage, as it is through story that people understand and explain the world around them.[1] Jonathan Gottschall suggests that stories are ‘…a form of social glue that brings people together around common values’.[2] Stories thrive in coastal areas, around the meeting of land and sea. This is especially true in the UK, which has far more coast than middle, and yet they are often neglected by official heritage frameworks.[3]

To find out these stories we asked anyone aged 18 and over with a connection to Tenby or Aberystwyth to share a story, memory or anecdote about their local coast and/or seafront. People were encouraged to share anything they considered special or important, from a particularly nice meal of fish and chips to a memorable day at the beach to a local folktale to a historical event they found interesting, and everything in between. Anything important to them! We also asked people to share how they would like to see their chosen coast and/or seafront managed, bearing in mind the story they had just shared. The stories were uploaded to this website, to exist as a community resource and inspire people to think about how they define their own heritage.